Inspection of surface defects on small arms ammunition cartridges is a vital aspect in the manufacturing process, allowing for maintenance of a high level of quality and reliability in the munitions industry. Standards have been developed and applied by manufacturing for many years to assist in classifying various types of defects. Alternatively, a military standard is used such as that introduced in 1957 by the US Department of Defense, MIL-STD-636. For small arms ammunition calibers up to 0.50, this standard severs to evaluate and illustrate a practical majority of defects assembled as a result of extensive surveys covering all the small arms ammunition manufacturing facilities in the US.
Currently, inspection of small arms ammunition cartridges in accordance with this or any other standard is left to human inspection by which individual inspectors are each assigned the task of visually inspecting the cartridges for surface defects at a rate of about 60-70 units per minute. Each of these inspectors is trained to look for all defects and sort these into collection bins, all done manually. There are obvious disadvantages which increase inspection errors, including inspector fatigue, inexperience, lack of uniformity in the application of inspection standards, eyesight problems, inconsistency, and a slow rate of output. A result of this approach is the possibility of over or under inspection which increases inspection costs. Also, the labor cost problem is also a very real one as the tedious inspection work must be done economically so that low wages are common, yet the standards applied by the inspectors must not be jeopardized.
It would therefore be desirable to improve the inspection process for small arms ammunition cartridges so as to eliminate the errors associated with human visual inspection and decrease the costs associated with inspection.